


If You Love Me (Don't Let Go)

by After_Angels



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Just a drabble, trade feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 08:29:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22352029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/After_Angels/pseuds/After_Angels
Summary: She lets herself go to the one person she really needs right now, knows this is the worst time to seek Lindsey out, for so many reasons, but she just needs to not be alone. Needs to imagine that if she had been braver, maybe there would have been something strong enough to tie her to Portland, to tie her to Lindsey.
Relationships: Lindsey Horan/Emily Sonnett
Comments: 8
Kudos: 66





	If You Love Me (Don't Let Go)

**Author's Note:**

> Just some relatively short thoughts about these two goobers that I wrote after the trade news and never quite finished how I wanted. Have some other stuff in the works now, so probably not goin to add onto this, but might play around in this universe again. Hope you enjoy!

She’s not with Lindsey when she gets the call. She is rooming with Sam this camp and spending all of her free time with Kelley. Spending the offseason without her friend and mentor had been tough, but seeing the way Kelley’s eyes had lit up when she visited and talked about her partner, and the life they were building in DC, had almost made the loneliness worth it. But devoting all of her free moments to bothering Kelley also means that she hasn’t really seen Lindsey much this camp. Hasn’t wanted to, if she’s being totally honest with herself.

There had been something between them since that Utah game. Something electric and fragile that they seemed to be dancing on the precipice of. She knows that her own feelings for Lindsey have waxed and waned with the seasons but have never really vanished, and this fuel to her long-standing crush had been almost more than she had been able to take. 

But she had been a coward. Constantly testing the limits of their friendship and then backing off as soon as it seemed that something more between them was possible. The final straw was when Russell reached back out to Lindsey. Emily had been almost over-enthusiastic in her support of Lindsey when the other woman had told her about Russell asking to meet back up over the break, not wanting to seem too dependent on whatever it was they were building together. She regretted it immediately, of course. Especially when Lindsey’s expression had closed off as Emily told her that she should go after what she wanted. She knows that Lindsey had needed her to be brave, had wanted her to name this thing between them and move it into the light. But Emily has always been a coward in the moments that have counted.

The same is true now. Sam is off shopping for sweaters for Wilma with Rose, Kelley is off talking to her partner, and Sonnett is alone in her room when Mark Parsons calls her on her rest day. Part of her already knows what this call is. Knows that Mark calling her in the offseason means that her whole life is going to change. And maybe that’s why she doesn’t pick up. She knows that it’s unprofessional, knows that she needs to face this head on, but part of her is oh so tired of not being enough and that scared, small part of her wins out. 

She takes a bath. She hasn’t taken one in ages, but she locks her door, texts Sam that she needs some time to decompress, and lets the warm water engulf her. She tries not to think about the dog parks she had scoped out for Bagel, or the new brunch place around the corner from her and Lindsey that she had wanted to try. And she really tries not to think about how hard she’s going to have to fight to make this Olympic roster. 

She stays in the tub until her fingers start to prune, and decides that she is going to let herself have one last indulgence before she calls Mark back. She knows that Rose and Sam are still out from Sam’s snaps, and that Lindsey had texted one of their group chats declining the invite to go with them in favor of having the room to herself. So Sonnett collects the little amount of courage she still has left, and lets her love for Lindsey fuel it into something white-hot and reckless. 

She lets herself go to the one person she really needs right now, knows this is the worst time to seek Lindsey out, for so many reasons, but she just needs to not be alone. Needs to imagine that if she had been braver, maybe there would have been something strong enough to tie her to Portland, to tie her to Lindsey. When Lindsey opens the door in her pjs and a messy bun, Emily can’t help herself but to reach out. Lindsey catches her, like she always has, and Sonnet just wordlessly nuzzles into her. Knows this isn’t fair to Lindsey, or her boyfriend, but she just needs to feel wanted, even if just for a second. Lindsey, to her credit, just rubs her back comfortingly and drags her into the room she is sharing with Rose. 

“Sorry Linds,” she mutters as she detangles herself from her friend to sit on the bed. 

Lindsey has always been there for her in these moments, held her when she was stressed about making the World Cup roster, and dried her tears when she decided to go to Australia after being left off of roster after roster. Lindsey, regardless of everything and anything else between them, has always been her safest place. And she needs that now. Especially if she is going to lose it.

Lindsey crawls into bed with her, props herself up against the headboard and pulls Sonny into her so that her back is resting against Lindsey’s chest, tucking her head around the defender’s shoulder before responding.

“What happened, Emily?”

Lindsey’s use of her full name centers her, somehow. It’s always Sonnett, Sonny, Dasani, and sometimes even in quiet moments a shy  _ Em _ , but Emilly is reserved for when Lindsey knows her friend just needs to break down. Needs to be someone other than the one everyone else leans on when it gets rough. She may have been the one holding up a sobbing Kelley after their final game at the World Cup, but that night she had crawled in bed besides Lindsey, who had sleepily wrapped herself around the smaller woman and muttered a gentle  _ Emily _ . And that was the moment she had finally been able to break down. 

It’s the same today. Emily can’t even respond, doesn’t even really know. In a way it’s everything, the way she and Lindsey have been fractured in the offseason, how alone she had been without Kelley, her fears of being left off the Olympic roster once again, and the call from Mark she just knows is going to uproot her when she had just been feeling like Portland could really be where she built her home. When she finally thought Lindsey could be the person she would get to build it with. 

And that’s what finally breaks her. Even though she knows she had missed this particular chance with Lindsey, it had always seemed like Portland was theirs, in some intangible way. That regardless of what either of them did during the offseason, those moments they shared together with their team, in their city, lived almost apart from the rest of their lives. Losing that feels so much like losing Lindsey, like losing any version of her future that could see her and Lindsey together at the end of all this. 

She lets out a choked sort of gasp, and then she’s gone. Lindsey turns her around and now she is almost in her teammates lap, mumbling apologies incoherently as she tries in vain to quell the desperate sobs she has been trying to keep down. 

Lindsey looks worried now, and reaches for her phone, maybe to call Kelley, but the only thing that she wants right now is to have this selfish moment with the woman she loves and so she manages to get out, “Just need you right now. Please Linds, just you.”

And Lindsey’s expression just melts into something so fond and gentle that Emily thinks maybe she didn’t ruin everything.

“Of course, Em. Whatever you need. I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, I swear. We’re a packaged deal, remember?”

And this promise, which used to mean everything but means so little in the face of her future, is what finally allows Emily to vocalize the fear that’s been crippling her for the last few hours, and if she’s really honest with herself the last few years. 

“Will everything change if we aren’t?”

It’s really the distillation of everything Emily fears in her relationship with Lindsey. That what connects them is convenience more than anything deeper, and that when she has stopped playing for the national team, and been traded away for club, that Lindsey will still want her by her side. Even if it means long flights and meeting her in the stands after her games rather than in the tunnel. 

“Of course it will.”

And with that, Emily feels the last bit of her hope shatter. She flinches, and tries to untangle herself from Lindsey, but Lindsey is shushing her and rubbing down her arms gently, and she forces herself to settle, to hear Lindsey out.

“Change doesn’t have to be bad. Not having you in Portland would be awful, Em, but it doesn’t mean that we have to change. Instead of movie nights we can do Skype dates. We can fly to each other on by weeks and spend more time together in the off season we can make this work. You’re too important to me for anything else.”

Against all reason, Emily believes her.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on Twitter @After__Angels if you feel so inclined. I may come back to this later and actually write them ending up together, who knows!


End file.
